An American Idiom in London

Our eagle-eyed man in the field, Inspector Q, sent in this hot tip. It’s a list of 50 American words and phrases that have apparently crept into everyday British English use, as nominated by readers of one of the BBC’s magazines/websites/things.

It’s an interesting list, not just for the actual words and phrases themselves, but also for all the cultural insight it gives us into what irritates people about foreign words creeping into their native vocabularies. The British have always had the slightly hypocritical attitude of ‘We can’t stand the way you mangle The Language! (But give us the new season of The Sopranos or we’ll go mad)’. So it surprises me whenever they complain about “Americanisms”, since they’re the ones throwing open the door and rolling out the red carpet for them. 

Anyway, here’s the list again, over on the BBC website, and what follows is my own commentary on each one. We’ll do it in two parts, 1 to 25 today, 26 to 50 jutorrow. As always, any comments and opinions are welcome, stick ‘em in the box down below or head over to our Facebook page and slap ‘em on the wall there. And again, many thanks to Inspector Q up around WaWa somewhere for the link!

1. It does seem like a very ‘Friends’ thing to say, although probably it’s just part of a New York dialect.

2. Agreed.

3. This is pure News-Speak, a strange off-shoot of its parent language that was invented by news readers and announcers to make their ramblings less rambly, in much the same way the truncated Headline Grammar works.

4.  I think 24/7 is alright. What about you? Back in the nineties, in college, we used to say ‘Are you studying?’, to which the reply was ‘24/7/365, bro.’

5. This is one of those horrible American verb-noun transmutations, where you give a noun a verb form it never previously had. There are others here on this list.

6. The incorrect use is nicely explained on the site, but to clarify the waiter thing, one says of waiters/waitresses that they ‘wait tables’, ‘wait on customers’ etc. ‘What do you do?’ ‘I wait tables at a restaurant in rynek,’ etc.

7. Another one I like. Sometimes, like with languages, there are things which can not be explained; they have no rules or theory attached to them, they just are. At which point, I like to tell the pedantic, overly-inquisitive and cloistered that ‘It is what is is, relax!’

8. An old one this, coming from the American term ‘fanny’ for ‘bottom’. It’s an inoffensive way of referring to the bum that dates from the 1920s, possibly from John Cleland’s 18th century fictional heroine Fanny Hill (thanks, Dictionary of American Slang, ISBN 0-06—96160-). Note that in British slang, fanny is a similarly inoffensive term for vagina).

9. A baseball expression I suppose. When you stop to think about it, a lot of slang and idiom comes from sports, at least in English. How about in your language?

10. Well Chris, the latest OED does list it as a noun derivative of physical. The 1991 Random House Webster’s also lists it with a plural form and dates both to 1585. Proof that not everyone processes language the same way.

11. Transport is more flexible because it can be a noun and a verb, so let’s go with that wherever possible.

12. Apart from this being one of those horrible ‘new’ words invented by marketing and business people, it’s interesting that (apparently) non-American speakers are using the American pronunciation (leather-age instead of lever-age). You get it a lot when people are discussing how to make more money from existing stuff. ‘How can we add leverage to Product X to make it more profitable?’ they say. Then die horribly when Pinhead from the Hellraiser films comes to get them. (OED says it’s a US form of the British financial term ‘gearing’, btw).

13. Can’t comment on that since I don’t regularly listen or watch English news.

14. As interesting as some of the stuff here is, what’s really interesting is the insight into British mentality on display. Some of it is very ‘Little Englander’ as we say; ‘Small Island, Big Ego’ and all that jazz. No offence to Mr. Nicholson btw, but it is rather amusing.

15. Agreed. It’s a spoken shortcut that *really* doesn’t work in print. We need to abolish this one right away.

16. Eh, I don’t mind this one. Most of these so-called Americanisms are dialectical flavour which in their own context are fine, but in the mouths and minds of our friends over on the Blighted Isle taste horrible.

17. Not sure why this is here; ‘bangs’ has always been a word used to describe a type of fringe, usually in women’s hair. Dates back at least as far as the 1960s in British and American English.

18. That’s a straight copy from the US to the UK. I wouldn’t say it myself because I’m too old and so have been saying ‘take away’ for too long to change now. But this highlights how the influence of foreign words and phrases on other countries and cultures is a generational thing. I suspect the majority of people in Britain who are actually using these more ordinary Americanisms are younger people who watch a lot of American TV, either on the Internet or actually (gasp!) on TV. The older people who use them are probably really only using the business, finance and marketing stuff etc, as it tends to migrate with the bosses of international companies and so on.

19. I suspect he’s right. Some people tend to think of the US as one big country, with one culture united on the foundations of Hollywood, hamburgers, ‘mom’ and apple pie. Whereas anyone who’s actually been there knows that each state is really more like an entirely individual nation. Culture, cuisine, mentality, humour; all these things differ greatly from state to state, with of course some degree of homogeneity between northern and southern states, the Midwest, the east coast and west coast etc.

20. Another detestable tendency of making abstract concepts into countable nouns. ‘A half hour’, ‘one half hour’ etc. There are others on the list here too.

21. Like here... See also 5, making things into nouns that weren’t really nouns to begin with.

22. No idea what he means. Can anyone explain this one?

23. No problems here, other than the quoted American ‘z’ spelling – remember, US: ize, UK: ise.

24. It *is* quite a lazy phrasing, but that’s the tendency of language, to shorten and be reduced into something that can be spoken more quickly or clearly. It’s a cultural cliché to think of it as an American tendency as it happens in nearly every language.

25. It is indeed an American variant of normality.

More tomorrow!

The Road to Translation. Part 3: Memory, Stress, Habit

One of the great things about working with languages is the variety of people you can meet. I don’t just mean foreigners, but even your own countrymen. Old, young, experienced, inexperienced – and the coolest part is the diversity of the journeys they all took to get to where they are today. Some trained as translators because they fell in love with a foreign culture at an early age, some because they were born and raised bilingually, and others because they found that they possessed rare knowledge in a certain language pair.

But however you came into translating, or if you’re still thinking of doing so, then there are certain key areas that are common to all of us, and these include our work habits and our personal attitudes. Today we’re going to have a brief, blog-size look at some of the key aspects of these ideas.

“Kept on along the narrow track of habit, like a traveller; climbing a road in a fog” – Edith Wharton

Multitasking is an important tool. There will be moments when everything happens at once and you need to quickly do several things at once. This is of course particularly true for interpreters, who must listen and speak concurrently, or listen and mentally prepare their translation at the same time.

On a closely related note, a good memory is important too – for interpreters, remembering what someone said from anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes ago, and being able to accurately paraphrase that with all the crucial facts, is a key skill. For translators, a good memory will help if you know, for example, where you saw or used a particular translation of a word before now. Particularly with contracted work where you do multiple, frequent jobs for the same client, a lot of words and phrases can occur and reoccur, and also style points and formatting issues, so it’s always helpful if you can recall that stuff at the time. Sometimes you’ll get a glossary or some previous documents that show you which words and phrasings etc that the client likes, but more often than not it’s up to you to work it out. Translating Memories in your CAT tools (more on them next week too) can also help here, or you can make your own glossaries and databases of words and phrases. A simple idea that works for me is keeping an Excel workbook, with one sheet per client, or subject category etc.

nil desperandum

Translating and interpreting are stressful jobs, make no mistake. So being able to cope with pressure and stress is also very important. Interpreters need to be able to think on their feet without becoming flustered or thrown off by anything unplanned or unexpected. Being able to control large groups of people, who sometimes all want to speak at once or become over-excited, is also a good skill, and requires a degree of imposition of will. Translators have deadline pressures, and must try to control their frustration with clients who are not afraid to complain about mistakes that are actually their own misunderstandings or ignorance, agency staff who don’t know the difference between full-stops and commas, and accountants who want to pay you 60 days after invoicing with cheques your bank can’t accept (thanks, America ;).

It’s somewhat beyond the scope of our article here to try and tell you how to cope with stress, (although it would be good to hear from some of you what your own coping strategies are); needless to say, you need to grow a thick skin and quickly (but not so thick that you let legitimate criticism bounce off you). Yes, it’s a cliché, but don’t be disheartened or discouraged. Every translator takes a beating now and then, even the most experienced ones. It’s just part of the job.

A małpa on your back

Personal responsibility: It doesn’t matter if you wake up late, sit in your pyjamas and spill coffee down your front whilst you go over the material for the conference you’ll be interpreting at the next day, but what IS important is that you arrive at the conference punctually, that you are clean and smart and appropriately dressed for the occasion, and that you remain respectful of the event’s participants.

When you work from home as a freelance translator, you can stay up late, wake up late, you don’t have to wash your hair for days, you can skip shaving… but you absolutely can not miss your deadlines unless you’ve agreed an extension well in advance. If you’re working on a long or difficult project with multiple parts that all require feedback and revision before being passed on, you must stay within reach of your computer as much as possible so as not to miss any incoming files, questions or requests.

Ultimately, it’s about paying the bills, and if you’re slow and late and not available half the time, you’ll either miss the job offers that come in, or you’ll get a rep for being unreliable, and that’s anathema. Your ability to constantly monitor your email is crucial. Fortunately, many mobile phones these days can also check email, although unless you have a really sexy one with a proper QWERTY keyboard, I would advise against replying with anything other than a brief message to say you’ll get back in touch with them as soon as you get back to your desk – clear, nicely written emails are as vital as clean, healthy blood!

That's it for this week. Please bear in mind that any non-specific 'advice' on this blog is based on my own opinions and experience; you're free to heed it or not, and as with all such things some of it may suit you, some not. I'm only here to give our junior colleagues some ideas, and perhaps refresh the memories of our more experienced colleagues. And, as always, if you want to add anything or tell me what bzdura I'm talking, comments are below. :)